What Are Friends For?

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This morning I turned on the TV and CNN was displaying Facebook pages as its source of information. No longer a college dating service, Facebook has hit the big time: it is now a source of news. But still, I can't quite take it seriously because of two odd things. Number one is "poking," a service they offer and one which completely mystifies me. What's it for? I get poked daily by my husband--and I mean in the Facebook sense--and nothing changes in my life. Then I poke him back because he gets slightly offended if I don't, causing him to say on occasion, "I poked you on Facebook, did you see?" Not wanting to hurt him unless it's absolutely necessary, I return the poke. The cycle continues.

The second oddity is the whole "lets be friends" thing. If you use Facebook, you know that when a friend of yours gets a new friend, Facebook alerts you to this fact. Like you care. Then it asks if you want to be friends with that new friend. What the heck? Half the time I don't even want to be friends with my friends.

Why is Facebook so hot for everyone to be friends with everyone else's friends? What's in it for them? How does that put more money in their pockets? While these questions do not keep me up nights, they do plague me during my waking hours. Well, not plague, exactly, more like the flu. I certainly would like to understand it. Having seen "The Social Network," the smash movie that alleges to recount the true story of how Facebook came to be, and wherein friends treat each other like shit in order to make more money, I figure money is involved.

Discuss.